


Love, Stephen

by RashiLovesRDJ3K



Series: Angst and Love [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional, F/F, F/M, Guilt, Major character death - Freeform, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Stephen Snaps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27938767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RashiLovesRDJ3K/pseuds/RashiLovesRDJ3K
Summary: The world is saved. Thanos defeated. But there was a price that had to be paid, there always is. In the wake of the victory, there is a funeral and four letters left behind. Four letters are all that are left of the one who saved them all.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Stephen Strange & Christine Palmer, Stephen Strange & Peter Parker, Stephen Strange & Wong, Tony Stark & Christine Palmer, Tony Stark & Peter Parker, Tony Stark & Stephen Strange, Tony Stark & Wong, Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Series: Angst and Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902727
Comments: 30
Kudos: 33





	1. The Funeral

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it.

The funeral had been a small affair unlike the larger than life man it was for. Limited to heroes only two of whom actually knew the man, a petite doctor and sorcerers who only knew the stoic leader and master.

There was no body. No one could limit Stephen Strange to one final resting place. Even in death the man would help the world, the multiverse. Tony had watched as the burnt and scarred body had turned into hundreds of beautiful turquoise butterflies. All of which flew away from the battlefield. They had advanced to the Sanctum, the man's last dwelling, Wong told him later, and dove into the Cauldron of the Cosmos. The manifestations of the Master's Magic would travel the cosmos and go wherever it was that mystical help was needed. Tony couldn't help but feel awed. The man had been...arrogant and proud....then why did he find it difficult to not feel his loss. How could he be so selfless if he was supposedly self-obsessed?

Tony Stark couldn’t help but notice that almost everyone at the wake was there merely for the sake of appearance, nothing more than a courtesy, a....formality of sorts. It made his blood boil. None of them were mourning. If anything Tony could see the sparsely hidden relief and joy in their eyes. What did it matter to Clint Barton that a man no longer lived if his best friend was brought back to life? Even if it was the same man who made it possible. There was a sliver of gratitude in him at best and indifference at worst. What did it matter to Steve Rogers that a supposedly powerful sorcerer no longer breathed? At least Bucky Barnes did and after all, soldiers were lost in war as long as Barnes wasn't. The hypocrisy choked Tony. Thor and Bruce had only briefly encountered the doctor and both had no one to offer their condolences to. He had been a man of no family unless one regarded Kamar-Taj as his home and his disciples as his comrades. What did it matter to Pepper Potts that the strangely dressed man apparently giving out tickets to something, who recruited her then fiance to fight a war in space from which he barely returned, had sacrificed his life if her husband didn’t and came back to her and their daughter when she hadn’t expected him to?

Tony tried not to but couldn’t help and resented them for their thankless demeanour. He watched as a closed-off friend hid his sorrow behind indifference, a shattered prior lover braved the day with a watery smile because “Stephen wouldn’t want me to cry” and he watched as a child innocent and naive asked the man to come back because it shouldn’t have been him. He saw human beings display pure emotion and felt some well up in him too. 

The difference being that he felt melancholy and guilt. Survivor’s guilt, his therapist would’ve told him. He had seen the haunted look on Strange, no, Stephen’s face. The anguish and the apology clear in ocean eyes. He had known then. It was supposed to be him. He was supposed to save them. To be the saviour of the new generation. But no, Stephen was an asshole who couldn’t bear that thought. Stephen couldn’t bear the thought that his wife would be a widow, that his child would grow up fatherless, that he would be laid to rest in the coffin that was now meant for Stephen Strange. No, Stephen Strange had to have a god complex. He apparently had to save a man who had been almost prophesied to kiss death. 

Tony wanted to resent Stephen Strange, to rage at him but the thing about people no longer with you is that it is difficult to hate them for long. However, he felt the small hand in his own and looked down at the smiling face of his daughter, too small to notice the sombre atmosphere as long as she was with him and couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but indebted. He couldn’t imagine a mourning Morgan Hannah Stark and he didn’t want to. Her smile was worth everything and maybe, just maybe a certain sorcerer had known that too. 14,000,605 he’d said and in how many of those had he known Morgan, known him? Why hadn’t he let him play his destined role? Was it because he deserved to live? Because his daughter deserved a father? His wife a husband? The world an Iron Man? Or was it because the doctor knew what would happen otherwise? How many funerals of Tony Stark had Stephen Strange attended? Enough to break him? Why would he even bother? They barely knew each other. It would make no difference to him if the world was less a Tony Stark. Why then? Why give up his life for another? Why give Tony lifelong guilt and grief? Why had he struck a bargain and a trade of lives? 

That was knowledge that would forever sleep with Stephen Strange.

Guilt he knew wasn’t something only he felt. Wong had made that clear. He could empathise with that. But who was Stephen Strange to interfere with fate? Who was he to play Messiah? Tony needed to hold onto his rage else he would succumb, succumb to the selfless act of the man and forgive him. He didn’t want to. He needed something. A sense of righteousness, perhaps. That would get him through the day. Prevent him from crying into his hands.

But as he settled into his desk, back at the cabin, to do something, anything, he saw four envelopes. Each marked with a name written in elegant script. He, somehow, instantly, knew who the sender was. To question how a dead man had sent letters would be the sane thing to do but Tony had never been sane. He would get his answers from Wong. But there was still the question of why the letters hadn’t been just given to the ones they were meant for. Was this the price he had to pay? To play messenger? Seemed like an unfair bargain, but then the heaviest envelope was meant for him, no for ‘Anthony’. It was meant for the Tony Stark, Stephen Strange had come to know, not the one who sat holding it.

He considered just pretending they didn’t exist. Things from the dead didn’t exactly bring joy, just a renewed sense of grief. Did he really want to inflict that on these people? But then how could he do that to them, to Stephen? To deny them and him this last farewell? He didn’t know whether he would read his but the others would be read. He would ensure that. Anything other than that would be barbaric and disrespectful to the memory of a man who’d given everything he had to the world and left behind these words, words he hoped would bring solace not misery. And if they did that then keeping them to himself would be cruel. And even the Merchant of Death wasn’t that inhuman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm taking forever but I'm really busy with school and stuff but I still wanted to give you guys something. This isn't much but...it's one of my favourite poems (by me) and I think Tony would agree with it. Let me know what you think?   
> P.S: Somehow all my poems are IronStrangey. IronWizard, don't you agree?

Tony Stark was no poet but that night his hands found a pen and some paper. The few lines that ended up on the sheet were no masterpiece but he strangely felt a little calmer after he had written them. He went to bed with a strong resolve to deliver some letters the next day: 

Why do we want people to remember us?  
Why do we want to leave a mark behind?  
Why is it that those who hated us in life  
Find it difficult to do so in death?  
Why do they give sympathies to our family?  
Why does one bring food to a house in mourning?  
No one will ever eat it.  
Why do we have such large wakes when  
The one who it is for, will never know?  
Why do we bring flowers to funerals and graves,  
They die and wither away with no one to appreciate them,  
Just like the long passed friend of the bereaved.  
Why is it so hard to insult the dead?

Is it because they're untouchable?  
Because they're so far out of our reach?  
Because we repent our actions?   
Because we want to atone our sins?  
Or is it simply to maintain a grand illusion?  
That there is something beyond life?  
That death is this great remission   
That it is not a simple continuation  
Of nature's age old commandment.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first multi chapter fic. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.


End file.
